Pepper-sprayed women get eyed in Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street protesters have released several videos showing alleged police brutality. But those on YouTube and other places have focused more specifically on videos featuring young, good-looking women.

A video documenting alleged police brutality during Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street protest went viral over the weekend, receiving millions of views and attention from major media outlets.

But even at the protest’s highest level of attention, media coverage and reactions online show a failure to take the legitimate concerns of the protesters seriously -- and seem to reveal a disturbing thread of sexism and bias against the largely youthful demonstrators.

The video features a group of young women standing on the sidewalk, some filming, none of them shouting or being disruptive. The women are quickly corralled together with orange mesh nets by a much larger group of predominantly male policemen.

Some of the young women begin to cry “Why are you doing this?” Then a passing New York City police officer pepper sprays them in the face. It appears in the video that he was unprovoked.

On Monday, footage of the pepper-sprayed women was the most-viewed video in the News and Politics section on YouTube, with one version alone approaching one million views (total viewership is difficult to determine, as the video has been duplicated numerous times).

So why did this video trend when others didn’t? Commenters focused on the brutality of the police attacks -- but also center around the outfits and attractiveness of the young women, as well as their emotional reactions to being pepper-sprayed.

Viewers have insulted the women’s choice of clothing, their age, and even how one woman screamed after being pepper-sprayed.

Deciphering anonymous Internet cruelty is tricky. It’s often just an attempt to troll -- provoke a reaction.

On a copy of the video on YouTube, Ironzealot7531 writes “those girls just wanted to make a scene out of it” and “these bitches are acting like they had acid thrown in their faces. Fucking pussies.”

SouthernBella24 calls the protesters “clowns” and “dope smoking hippies” that “act like a bunch of animals” in a YouTube comment on a protest video. “Get a job & get a life” she adds.

JonOSevens writes on a Reddit thread about the video that the young women are “stereotypical hippy chick(s) acting in an overly dramatic manner. ”

“Ask your Mommy's and Daddy's how they liked being charged by the NYPD Mounted Unit in that 1970 demonstration. Your the biggest bunch of panty waist demonstrators if I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all. It's embarrassing. Maybe you need a course in Protest 101 up there in Boston. Or watch some footage from the 68' demonstration in D.C. or the Chicago Democratic Convention. Do something besides whining.”

In the reddit comment thread on the video, Drstrangenorm defended the young women, writing: “More often than not it is the young [women] who take these approaches. They fight our wars, they oppose our tyranny, they still have a future to fight for.”

On a copy of the video on YouTube, freegadgets wrote that he or she is disturbed by the amount of comments “cheering on the criminal cops as they violate the basic human rights of Americans.”

“Some people want to see the protesters harmed because they are ‘hippies’” freegadgets added in another YouTube comment.

The spike in media coverage, however, is centered on the police brutality, and not on what protesters are demanding, as often happens with protest coverage. Many news articles referenced the pepper-sprayed women and featured a dramatic picture of one young woman in a tank top, kneeling on the ground and crying out in pain.

Just days ago, even the liberal-leaning Internet publication Huffington Post described the protesters as “20-somethings in flannel pajama pants and tie-dyed T-shirts... playing snare drums and openly smoking marijuana on benches.”

Protests have ranged from a couple thousand participants to a couple hundred on any given day. Just as the name implies, Occupy Wall Street protesters are literally occupying lower Manhattan with tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses and generators for their electronics.